I found this in one of my myriad old notebooks, early eighties, I think. I have no recollection of writing it but from the hand writing it looks like two sittings. I assume it was done while reading Borges. I like it so I'm going to continue it.

BACK

The History of Tears.

Tears are the liquid product of a process that cleans and lubricates the eyes called lacrimation. The word lacrimation (also spelled lachrymation) may also be used in a medical or literary sense to refer to crying. Strong emotions, such as sorrow or elation, may lead to crying. The process of yawning may also result in lacrimation. Although most land mammals have a lacrimation system to keep their eyes moist, humans are the only mammal generally accepted to cry emotional tears

In Nevada, USA, the 'black tears of the Apache' are eagerly collected. These are mineral nodes set in cliff faces. When found they are polished and form items of personal jewellery. The story goes that, after a battle, the Apache warriors retired to a particularly inaccessible Bute, a steep sided, flat-topped rock formation. Their situation was hopeless and, rather than be captured, they killed themselves by leaping from the rock. Their womens' tears formed the black nodes in the Basalt, polished these appear as obsidian. To posses one means never having to cry again as the Apache women have shed all your tears for you. 

In the ancient world the Greeks spoke of 'the water beneath waters', it concerned one of the earliest Mysteries, predating those of the Orphic and Dionysian. These 'black tears of the Underworld' became transparent in this world but with a much higher salt content. About the same time, tears of virgins and, more particularly, young boys were highly prized for certain ailments such as dropsy, sleeping sickness and all forms of what, today, we would call cancer.

In Egypt it was considered proper to weep as the retinue followed the coffin to the tomb of the pharaoh, as they were to be walled up alive with their master, tears seem appropriate. However, victim’s families would follow their member and collect the tears on a piece of white linen, when it became sodden another piece would replace it. The family would gain prestige from the number of cloths in their possession. Again, these were used for medicinal purposes.

In the middle ages tears of fools and saints were highly sought, similarly collected on white cloths. These had the power to ward off the consequences of sinning. Crusaders tied them to their weapons. 
Alchemists and various Magi had uses for tears, taking their cue from Egyptian sources, in particular Pythagoras and Trismegenaties (three times blessed). Tears formed one of the primal orders of matter; effluents of the body are equal to, or examples of primal matter. Tears, as well as faecal matter, were among the main ingredients for the distilling of the Philosophers Stone. 

In 'Dune' by Frank Herbert, we have the phrase, 'giving water to the dead'. Herbert took a lot of his ideas for this book, from a Nineteenth century anthropologist, Daphne Culbert, who was captured by a Bedouin tribe near the Moyen Atlas Mountains. She chronicled, in some detail, her six months of captivity in her book ' Arts amour Arabia'. As a disciple of Richard Burton, she was rather given to dwell in detail on there sexual habits, but one chapter tells of the disdain the men had for tears, they were as pointless as 'giving water to the dead'. She elaborates by telling us the only time it was seemly for a man to weep was at the site of a particularly beautiful, and naked, twelve year old girl, preferably a captive.

Shakespeare talks of 'these drops squeezed by our memories.' The Elizabethans made wrist bands from their hair and exchanged them with the beloved. This was to insure, on resurrection day, when all must search the world for every fragment of their corporal being in order to be whole again, the lovers would find each other. For the same reason it was common for families to stand around an open coffin weeping on the corpse, encouraging each other to greater fits of grief by reciting memories of the deceased, it being felt that the touch of tears would have the strongest tie, come the final judgement. The tears also served to mitigate the sins of the departed.

Alaister Crowley, Occultist and erstwhile Magician, self styled, 'The Great Beast, collected tears from his disciples and used them for a prick balm. It was said this unguent could keep him erect, non-stop, for forty-eight hours, though we only have his word for it. His method of collection involved sexual degradation and, comparatively, mild torture.

T.S.Elliot had a supplier in Totenham Court Road, who made candles using tears. All his poetry was written by the light of these candles. Ezra Pound thought this a gross affectation. In his defence Elliot explained that there were chemicals in tears that, when incorporated with beeswax and subject to heat, produced a vapour that was mildly hallucinogenic. 

Dylan Thomas used to put one tear stain on every page of his manuscripts. Some said he cheated and used rain water. As his extant manuscripts are so few, this seems unlikely. It is to be noted that, in common with other Celtic artists and poets, in his cups, Thomas was subject to bouts of weeping and could often be seen, with a tear stained face, mumbling to himself on the streets of Soho.

Hitler was fascinated by tears. It is said he used to bathe in them. He would never allow himself to have an erection. If it happened he would immediately order his 'Bad von tragoes', bath of tears. In the saline waters, perhaps the first deprivation tank, his erection would go away. He also used this infamous bath to plan his military strategies. Contrary to evidence given at Nuremberg, he never used Jewish tears but only those of blond unmarried women who could prove their ancestry for five generations. There was no shortage of donors, to the extent that there was sufficient surplus for him to have it frozen for use as ice cubes in his drinks.  

The German director Hertzog, made one film were, through hypnosis, all the cast were on the verge of tears, it made their eyes shine.

The Mayans, in Mexico, saw tears as a sign of weakness. At the moment when the sacrifice had his heart cut out, the people would shout 'no tears'.

There is a sect in Georgia were the monks have been crying for twelve hundred years. Two hours at a time they each take it in turn to weep for Christ's crucifixion.

Napoleon, after the battle of Waterloo, sent a phial of his tears to Josephine. Some cynics maintain that his tears were more due to piles than defeat. It is true that piles kept him from the field of battle during the crutial early stages. When he did, eventually,  arrive it was too late to save the day. 

The first tears ever shed are described in the Apocrypha. As God was making Adam, he wept, because of all the pain he could see in the future, for his creation. It is believed that the reason he created man was as a 'companion to His tears' having realised that his angels were deficient in this respect. These tears still exist as a dark pool beneath, some say, Mount Atlas, others Glastonbury Tor. Needless to say various miraculous powers are attributed to the site, available to any who discover its whereabouts, in particular everlasting life, of course but, more obscurely, also the ability to cure warts. ( see Dons Scottus 'Unpublished Papers')

Notoriously, the Nag Hamandi library suffered from its nearly forty years of being passed around from dealer to dealer before finally being rescued by an American Foundation, barely in time. As it is, the papyrus scrolls have suffered, some beyond repair, to leave tantalising fragments that experts have spent years trying to piece together. One fragment stands alone, only the title of the book left, the rest dust. The scrap says in Aramaic 'Concerning the transcendental methods of The Way of Tears', It dates from circa first century after Christ but looks to be copied from a much earlier document. Only two other references exist to this lost document, one in the Dead Sea Scrolls where reference is made to John the Baptist 'an adept of The Way of Tears', the other is in one of Pauls letters to the Corinthians, ' Do not listen to the lies of 'The Way of Tears'.

'Nunna daul Tsuny' Cherokee for 'the place where they cried'.

Another way of tears, more widely known, is the Trail of Tears. When the Cherokee Indians were forced to leave their tribal lands and march a thousand miles and more to the depredations of the Government reservations, they were determined to return. They purloined an idea from early settlers with their wagon trains moving across the vast prairies. These pioneers scattered bluebell seeds as they travelled so that the trains coming next year could just follow the river of blue flowers. The Cherokee, being more circumspect, planted the seeds of a particular flower native to that continent. Known variously as Night Bloomer, Moon Shadow, Evening Rose, it is a form of clover, its nearest relative being the Irish Shamrock. It blossoms at night, having black petals to more efficiently absorb the polarised light from the moon. By day it is almost invisible, curling in on itself. By night it is even less visible but does produce a distinct aroma easily discernable.   These seeds were planted on the trail by the sqaws who, having little water to spare, moistened the ground with their tears. And so they left a trail back home for those who would be, no doubt, travelling at night in order to avoid detection.

When the Trail of Tears started in 1838, the mothers of the Cherokee children were grieving and crying so much, they were unable to help their children survive the journey. The elders prayed for a sign that would lift the mother’s spirits to give them the strength. The next day a beautiful rose began to grow where each of the mother's tears fell. The rose is white for their tears; a gold centre represents the gold taken from Cherokee lands and seven leaves on each stem for the seven Cherokee clans. The White Cherokee Rose grows along the route of the Trail of Tears in Eastern Oklahoma today.

Mary Queen of Scots, had a crystal tear. She would hold it to her cheek when the preacher, John Knox, was giving one of his interminable sermons to her court.

The 'tears of a clown', mentioned in the popular song by Smokey Robinson, actually go back to the middle ages in Italy. Harlequin had a painted tear on his cheek because of his sadness at his inability to woo, win and tame Columbine; a flirty, female free spirit who epitomised all that was desired and unobtainable. Of course the influence of the Moors can be seen here as the various stories enacted by Harlequin and Columbine are directly taken from Sufi teaching.

The famous Anchorite, Simon of Tireus, spent forty years on top of a column in the market place of Athens. He spent it weeping for mans sins. Over time his tears eroded long black funnels in the stone.

Another who wept for mans sins was, of course, Christ. Again, from the Apocrypha, when Christ was taken into Hell during the temptation in the desert, he wept for the lost souls. His tears quenched the fires and all were released to Heaven. The Devil, incensed by the loss of those he would torment, vowed that one day his own son would rule the world.

Part of the Devils' anger with Christ is in the fact that Angels cannot cry. They have no powers of empathy or imagination, God like qualities, neither can they love or feel loss. They can only worship and, as in the case of the fallen, manifest their natures. It is not odd that the architect of Heaven is the same as that of Pandemonium, the Devils Palace. Satan, in his eternal attempts to usurp God, is determined to capture the ability to cry.
It is said that a great magician made a pact with Satan to 'provide him with tears'. The magician duly presented the Arch Fiend with a sack of blood red stones, burning with an inner fire, because they were artificial, the God powers, Satan sought, still eluded him. He rewarded the magician, nevertheless, with the eternal life he sought, as a rock on the mountain known as Ararat.
Once, every hundred years, the Devil takes a tear from the sack and throws it into the world to gloat over the general greed it will engender in man. The last time was in the nineteenth century around the discovery of the potential of oil; another was cast in Elizabethan times with the discovery of the new world and limitless gold. The actual 'Tears of the Devil' exist as a fist-sized gem and are avidly sought by magicians for the enormous power to persuade that they bestow. Hitler is said to have owned two.

'Crocodile tears' merely refer to the runnel-like troughs beneath the eyes of the beast, which look as if made by the path of tears. The ancient world believed the crocodile wept as it lured its prey, as reported by explorer Sir John Hawkins in the 15th century, to lure sympathetic prey items within reach ('and then he snatcheth at them') Reptiles, like the Devil, cannot cry, they have a nictating membrane to keep the eye moist.

 "A weary traveler.../Doth meet a cruell craftie Crocodile,/Which in false griefe hyding his harmefull guile,/Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares" (Spenser, Faerie Queen. )

"If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,/Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile" (Shakespeare, Othello).

In medical terms someone is said to have Crocodile Tears syndrome as an uncommon consequence of recovery from Bell's palsy, were faulty regeneration of the facial nerve causes sufferers to shed tears while eating.

Cures for crying when peeling onions. The handle of a teaspoon held in the mouth under the tongue is most efficacious, according to Mrs. Beatton, in her book 'On Household Management.' For a male, a piece of string tied round the 'member of reproduction, to which is attached a soup ladle', does the trick, so says the original Mr. Michelin, he of the good dinning guides. Under water is the only scientific answer to stop the vapours reaching sensitive eyes, the water, face mask and snorkel combine to provide an impenetrable barrier.

Incidentally, let us see how and why slicing of onions produces tears in the eyes . As onions are sliced, cells are broken, allowing enzymes called  alliinases  to break down  amino acid sulphoxides and generate sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid is unstable and spontaneously  rearranges into a volatile gas called syn-propanethial-S-oxide. The gas diffuses through air  and eventually reaches the eye where it reacts with the water to form a diluted solution of Sulphuric acid. This acid irritates the nerve endings in the eye, making them sting. Tear glands produce tears to dilute and flush out the irritant.

To this day, near Knaresbourgh, in Mother Shiptons Cave, people hang up baby shoes near the dripping roof and then come back months, or years later, to find their mementoes turned to stone, calcified by 'Mother Shiptons Tears'.

There is a difference between empathic tears and sentimental tears. The difference can be exemplified by a simple illustration. To be driving and confronted with a dog in the middle of the road, seemingly unavoidable, one kills it and sheds empathic tears for its tiny life, or, one swerves to avoid it, and ploughs into a bus queue of children and, of course, sheds sentimental tears.

Byron massaged his tears, at the beauty of his lovers, into their breasts.

Chatterton used his tears to salt his bogus manuscripts, written on linen, when he was starving, after he was discovered as a charlatan, passing off his own work as medieval.  His huge intake of arsenic, thought to ward off the pox, as well as confer eternal life, at that time, condensed in his tear ducts. Trying to stay alive, by eating his own work, he died.

In Italian opera there is talk of 'the tear of the voice', an affectation not shared by German singers.

In Liverpool a, what is now, minor port on the West coast of England, it was common, when beating up a casual passerby to exclaim 'Cry for your mammy'. This shows a marked Irish influence.

St. Gildas, surnamed 'Sapiens', or 'The Wise', a poor British monk who escaped to France during the turmoil following the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, describes, in his 'Book of Tears', a country with a population mild and unwarlike, who even in Roman times 'stretched out their hands like women to be chained.'

Crying is good for you. This idea goes back to Aristotle who theorized that crying at a drama 'cleanses the mind' of suppressed emotions by a process called catharsis; the reduction of distress by the release of emotions. Many people, today, will attend a performance or a film knowing beforehand that it will be an 'elicitor of psychogenic lacrimation' or a tearjerker.

William Frey contends that emotional crying is an eliminative process in which tears actually remove toxic substances from the body. Emotional tears contain more protein than tears produced by irritants. Researchers are now examining emotional tears for substances such as endorphins, ACTH, prolactin and growth hormone, all of which are released by stress.

Crying is not grief; it is a way of getting over grief.
Jante Yassen, a Boston area social worker, who leads groups for incest surviving, talks of the necessity of at least '1500 hours of crying' to get over the hurt of incest.

Sympathetic magic, like affecting like, is as old as man. It was thought that the 'tears of the dawn', dew, were particularly effective for certain maladies. Among the letters of Michelangelo, stored in the Vatican Library, is one passage, ' for sickness of the eyes that derives from heated blood, gather dew with very white linen'. 

In Hans Christian Andersons'  'Snow Queen', first published in 1845, the Troll, or the Devil, makes a magic mirror that distorts what it reflects, showing only what is cruel, ugly and evil. The mirror shatters when the Troll tries to take it to Heaven to torment God and the Angels. The myriad splinters, some no larger than a grain of sand, fall to earth and lodge in the hearts and eyes of people, making their hearts as blocks of ice and their eyes like the Troll mirror itself, able to see only the bad and ugly in people and things.
Kai and Gerda are friends whose bedrooms are opposite each other, either side of a narrow alley. Kai becomes infected by a fragment of the mirror and his personality changes. He leaves with the Queen of the Snow Bees to live in her palace. After many adventures, Gerda finds her way to the palace of the Queen where Kai is sitting on a frozen lake called  the Mirror of Reason. Gerda puts her arms around Kai and weeps tears of love. Kai's heart melts and his own tears dislodge the mote from his eye. 

The 'Teardrop Trailer' was invented in the U.S.A. in the 1930's. Roughly 4' x 4' x 8'-10', it was designed as a camping aid, giving enough room for a double bed and a cooking area in the fore part.

A Teardrop Hull submarine has a smaller acoustic signature, making detection by sonar more difficult.

In computing a 'teardrop attack' involves sending mangled IP fragments with overlapping, over-sized, payloads to the target machine. A bug in the TCP/IP fragmentation reassembly code of various operating systems causes the fragments to be improperly handled, crashing them as a result of this.

The King gave orders that certain fishermen of his people who were expert divers should explore the bottom of the sea where the ships of the Rover were destroyed. One of these discovered the body of the Princess and brought it to shore. And when they prepared it for burial the women found fastened upon one of the hands a shellfish, the two shells of which had closed upon a finger when it fell between them as they gaped. And when the shells were pried apart there rolled from between them a round bone, white and shining, and yet of a lustre so soft and beautiful that no man had seen the like. And the Brahman, when he saw it, said: "Herein are the tears of Heaven which fell into the sea, congealed and have become a gem which is beyond price." And he named it "Pearl," and carried it to the King.

Tear Bottles

The history of the tear bottle is captivating and poignant. Legends of tear bottles or lachrymatories abound in stories of Egypt and Middle Eastern societies. Tear bottles were prevalent in ancient Roman times, when mourners filled small glass vials with tears and placed them in burial tombs as symbols of love and respect.

Nero called for his Weeping Vase when he heard of the death of Plutonius.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, the notion of collecting tears in a bottle appears in Psalm 56:8 when David prays to God, 'Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book?' David’s words remind us that God keeps a record of human pain and suffering and always remembers our sorrows.

Tear bottles reappeared during the Victorian period of the 19th century, when those mourning the loss of loved ones would collect their tears in bottles ornately decorated with silver and pewter. The mourning period would end when the tears evaporated from the bottle.
During the American Civil War wives shed tears into bottles while their men were away. When he returned, if the bottle was empty, he got the message.

In the Orient, Pearls are associated with the tears of angels, mermaids or mythical nymphs. Ceylon legend tells how the tears of Adam and Eve created a lake that gave birth to pearls --white or pink pearls from Eve's tears, and more precious and rare grey and black pearls from Adam's tears. Why the difference? Man knows better how to control his emotions, according to the legend. Therefore, his tears are more valuable.

A Chinese man can write calligraphy with water he shoots from his eyes. Ru Anting, 56, of Luoyang, Henan province, sucks up the water with his nose and then sprays it through his tear ducts.
He recently demonstrated his skill at the Lotus World Park in Shanshui city, Guangdong, where he wrote four characters, 'Fu Ru Dong Hai' ('Fortune as vast as the sea'), on a board covered with red paper.

Job's Tears is a tall, roadside, wild grass that produces nature's most perfect beads. Its seed is naturally polished and has a hole through it, exactly like a bead. The name Job's Tears refers to the droplet-shaped, ~beads~ and to the biblical man 'Job' of the Old Testament who endured great suffering. It is agreed that the beads resemble tears, but there is some disagreement as to exactly whose tears the beads resemble. Depending on where you are in the world, this plant goes by various names including 'David's tears,' 'Saint Mary's tears,' 'Christ's tears' and just plain 'Tears'. The dried, gray beads are strung into necklaces throughout tropical regions of the world.

JERUSALEM COWSLIP
Pulmonaria officinalis. Spotted Lungwort, Spotted Cowslip of Jerusalem, Mary’s Tears, Virgin Mary’s Tears.

LEGEND

While Mary was on her way to Jerusalem to present Jesus in the temple she sat down at the edge of the road to nurse her Son. The spotted cowslip was growing at her feet and its blooms turned blue as they reflected the blue of the Blessed Mother’s eyes. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of the poverty and future suffering of her Child and the buds of the flowers grew pink as her eyes reddened from weeping. When she moved the Infant Jesus from her breast a few drops of her milk fell on the plant, spotting the leaves which have ever since borne the white markings of her milk.

The tear tattoo is a symbolic tattoo that is placed underneath the eye. The tattoo has several connotations. Teardrop tattoos usually signify the loss of a friend or loved one. Often, for a male, the tattoo is given to represent the death of a brother. An empty tear signifies that the loved one has been killed or that the bearer has unsuccessfully attempted murder. A filled tattoo signifies that a loved one has taken his or her own life, or was killed by a cause other than murder (car crash, death penalty, etc.) A tear with an empty top and a full bottom means that the wearer has avenged the murder of a loved one. The majority of the 'tear tattoos' seen in popular culture today, however, signify that the wearer has killed. With the number of tears representing the number of kills.

Tear tattoos, when given in prison; primarily indicate that the bearer has murdered someone, either in or out of jail. In Australian prisons, teardrop tattoos are often forcibly given to convicted child molesters by other inmates. The tattoo can also be given to commemorate a loved one who died while the wearer was incarcerated.
If you do not fit into any of the above criteria it is advised not to get a teardrop tattoo.

The Inuit have a legend of the first tears.

Once long ago, Man went hunting along the water's edge for seals. To Man's delight, many seals were crowded together along the seashore. He would certainly bring home a great feast for Woman and Son. He crept cautiously towards the seals. The seals grew restless. Man slowed down. Suddenly, the seals began to slip into the water. Man was frantic. His feast was getting away.
Then Man saw a single seal towards the back of the group. It was not moving as quickly as the others. Ah! Here was his prize. He imagined the pride on Woman's face, the joy in Son's eyes. Their bellies would be filled for many days from such a seal.
Man crept towards the last seal. It did not see him, or so Man thought. Suddenly, it sprang away and slipped into the water. Man rose to his feet. He was filled with a strange emotion. He felt water begin to drip from his eyes. He touched his eyes and tasted the drops. Yes, they tasted like salty water. Strange choking sounds were coming from his mouth and chest.
Son heard the cries of Man and called Woman. They ran to the seashore to find out what was wrong with Man. Woman and Son were alarmed to see water flowing out of Man's eyes.
Man told them about the shore filled with seals. He told how he had hunted them, and how every seal had escaped his knife. As he spoke, water began to flow from the eyes of Woman and Son, and they cried with Man. In this way, people first learned to weep.

The Heliades - Sisters/Daughters of the Sun, born to father Phoebus, God of the Sun and mother Clymene, a nymph. They live forever now as poplar trees, weeping amber tears for the loss of their brother, Phaeton, and so one ancient name for amber was 'Tears of the Daughters of the Sun'.

Their tears flow forth, and from the new-formed boughs
amber distils and slowly hardens in the sun;
and far from there upon the waves is borne
to deck the Latin women.
Ovid

A Lithuanian amber myth tells about the story of lost love. Perkunas, God of Thunder, was the father God and his daughter was Jurate, a mermaid who lived in an amber palace in the Baltic. One day a fisherman named Kastytis  cast his nets to catch fish from Jurate's kingdom. The goddess sent her mermaids to warn him to stop fishing in her domain. He did not stop, so Jurate went herself to demand he stop. Once she saw him she fell in love and brought him back to her amber palace. Perkunas, knowing Jurate was promised to Patrimpas, God of Water, was angered to find his daughter in love with a mortal. Perkunas destroyed the amber palace with a bolt of lightening to kill her mortal lover. Her palace was destroyed and Jurate was chained to the ruins for eternity. When storms in the Baltic stir the sea, fragments from the amber palace wash up on shore. Pieces in the shape of tears are particularly treasured, as they are the tears from the grieving goddess, as she weeps tears of amber for her tragic love.

The Jews have a 'Day of Tears', the origin of which goes back to the travails in the desert when the Israelites lost heart and listened to spies.

Not only did the spies in the presence of Moses and Aaron voice their opinion that is was not advisable to attempt conquering Palestine, but they employed every means of inciting the people into rebellion against Moses and God. On the following evening every one of them betook himself to his house, donned his mourning cloths, and began to weep bitterly and to lament. Their housemates quickly ran toward them and in astonishment asked their reason for these tears and lamentations. Without interrupting their wailings, they answered, 'Woe is me for ye, my sons, and woe is me for ye, my daughters and daughters-in-law, that are doomed to be dishonoured by the uncircumcised and to be given as a prey to their lusts. These men that we have beheld are not like unto mortals. Strong and mighty as angels are they; one of them might well slay a thousand of us. How dare we look into the iron faces of men so powerful that a nail of theirs is sufficient to stop up a spring of water?' At these words all the household, sons, daughters, and daughters-in-law, burst into tears and loud lamentations. Their neighbours came running to them and joined in the wails and sobs until they spread throughout all the camp, and all the sixty myriads of people were weeping. When the sound of their weeping reached heaven, God said: 'Ye weep to-day without a cause; I shall see to it that in the future ye shall have a cause to weep on this day.' It was then that God decreed to destroy the Temple on the ninth day of Ab, the day on which Israel in the wilderness wept without cause, so that this day became forever a day of tears.

In the Yosemite Valley there was controversy over which tribe were original to that place, and gave it its legends. Popularly, and mistakenly the Miwok were believed to have created the ancient stories. Here is the Paiutes story.

Many, many generations ago, long before the Creator had completed the fashioning of the magnificent cliffs in the Valley of Ahwahnee, there dwelt in the arid desert around Mono Lake an Indian couple. Learning from other Indians of the beautiful and fertile Valley of Ahwahnee, they decided to go there and make it their dwelling place. They began their journey into the Sierra Nevada towards Yosemite Valley, he carrying deer skins, and she holding a baby cradle in her arms and carrying a (wono) basket on her back. When the couple reached the site of present-day Mirror Lake, they began to quarrel. She wanted to go back to Mono Lake, but he refused, saying that no oaks or other trees grew there. He would not listen to her when she said she would plant seeds.

In despair, the girl began to cry and ran back toward the Paiute homeland of Mono Lake. Her husband grew angry and ran after her. To escape she threw the wono basket at him and it became Basket Dome. She continued running and threw the baby cradle at her husband. Today, we experience it as the Royal Arches. Because they had brought anger into Yosemite, the Creator became upset at the couple. The Creator in his anger turned the two into stone. He became North Dome and she became what we know as Half Dome. The Mono Lake Paiute girl regretted the quarrel and the rock wall she became, Half Dome, began to cry, thus forming Mirror Lake.

Today, you can still see the marks of those tears as they run down her face. And if you look very carefully at Half Dome, you can see it is fashioned after the way the Mono tribe looked; hair bobbed and cut in bangs. Her rock face stained with tears facing eastward towards their ancient homeland of Mono Lake.

In olden times the first white explorers called her South Dome, later Half Dome, but in Paiute she is known as T’ssiyakka or the English pronunciation Tissayack, meaning Girl who Cries, or Crying Girl. 

A South American legend telling us of the origins of emeralds, found on the Internet, is worth quoting in full, if only for its charming English.

The fascinating bewitchment of the gorgeous green stone also attracted the Muzos Indians which came within their permanent movement  to the pregnant mountain ranges of gems, where they radicated

The splendour of the beautiful stone inspired in them the explanation of their genesis into a poetry story in a combination between reality and fantasy.

Innards mountains full of emeralds, an exuberant nature filled with the most beautiful butterflies in the world, a great variety of poisoned serpents and a variety of animal life as well as a broken mountain by a river, was the paradise where their gods lived.

From that magical surrounder the couple that would live in the land had to take place.

The Legend says that the great creator of the territory and the Muzo's land was formed by a fabulous and areal God in a great inclinated shadow appearing over the sides of the Big River (Magdalena). Walking through slow movements throughout the immensity of the space and depending in his slower or less detention of his movements, the creation of mountains and valleys took place.

"Are stopped in the borders of the sacred river and took a small amount of land where he formed the idols called Fura (woman) and Tena (man) and threw them to the running where they were purified with foam kisses. They took breath and life and started the two first human beings". Love had to be unique and exclusively between each one. This rule had to be ordered; otherwise, the infidelity would become for both into oldness and death.

The legend says that over the centuries the couple habitated the land until once, over the same sides of the river (west) were are appeared, a young man from a rare race named Zarbi showed up looking for a privileged flower that had in its fragrance the ease for every pain and in its essences, the cure to all illnesses.

The young man travelled during various days over the mountains, crossed rivers and hiked trees in search of the precious flower. Fura, seeing that his movements were in vain, offered to travel along with him.

As the days passed by, the feeling between both changed and suddenly they fell in love. Finding a place into the jungle, they started their unfaithfulness. The accusation of Fura's conscience became into a sadness feeling and her oldness started to show up each and every day. This was a proof of her lack.

Tena then understood that the sacred law of the unique and exclusively love was being violated by Fura and so she had to die. As a punishment, she had to sustain during three days in her knees, the mortal body of her husband in order to clean with tears the remainings. She had to look and suffer the horrendous process of human decomposition.

Tena killed himself by his sharpened weapon pointing it across his heart once he was laying beside Fura`s knees. Before the eternal absence, Tena search for his revenge and converted Zarbi into a naked rocky terrain over a long distance land, so that Tena could hit him with rays of branches from Muzo's sky, the solar mansion.

Zarbi could defend himself by taking away his innards. His blood was converted into a torrent of water that flooded Muzo's land. Once he observed Fura with Tena's body, the water became more torrential until both bodies were separated apart forever and were left one in front of the other looking at each other into rocky terrains divided an outrageous current of water.

The legend says that "Tena's death was so painful to Fura, that her screams of pain perforated the echoes of the silent jungle and broke into millions of multicolour butterflies. Her tears, her torrent of tears were transformed by the sun into a mountain rage of emeralds".

Fura and Tena were finally forgiven by the god Are, which put them a "permanent guard of storms, rays and serpents", allowing that the waters of the Minero river ( Zarbi's blood), "discovers, clarifies, cleans and shines Muzo's emeralds. Fura's unfaithful and repentant tears"

The George Inn in Wallingford, England, is an old pub with many a story to tell.

The best known is that surrounding the so-called ’Tear-Drop Room’. This guest-bedroom has a wall that has been hand-decorated all over with what are either tears or pears. It is said they were painted by a landlord’s distraught daughter who had been confined to the room for her own safety. The poor girl had gone completely round the bend upon hearing of the murder of her lover. She apparently mixed soot from the fireplace with her tears and used her finger to draw the only shape she could think of on the wall.
Witnesses have spoken of being woken in the middle of the night by a ’very life-like’ young woman with tears streaming down her face, who then turned and disappeared into the teardrop wall.

After the demolition of Tripur lord Shiva, Bramha, Vishnu, Indra and other gods went to Himalayas to get rest. Lord Shiva closed his eyes and meditated for some time. When he opened his lotus shaped eyes tears fell from them on the earth. Those tears descended over Sitsail hill. Sometime after those tears became rudraksha trees. The fruits that grow on this tree are known as Rudraksha.

The Tears of Empress Matilda

Empress Matilda, also known as Maud, was the daughter of King Henry I and rightful heir to the throne of England. When Henry died in 1135 Matilda was in France, and Stephen, a favourite nephew of the King, and grandson of William the Conqueror, was crowned instead. Matilda was outraged at this and in 1139 she invaded England to claim her rightful position as Queen. Her arrogance alienated her from the people of London, and before she had secured her coronation an uprising left her with no option but to flee from London. Disguised as a corpse on a funeral bier, she escaped the Capital and made the arduous journey to Oxford to seek safety from her enemy. Legend has it that upon reaching the brow of Shotover Hill, she was so relieved to see the dreaming spires of Oxford that she burst into tears. It is said by some that the large stones at the Shotover sandpit are the fossilized tears of Empress Matilda.

When she came to the manger to worship the baby Jesus, a little shepherdess began to cry because she had no gift for the king. As each tear fell to the ground a beautiful white rose sprang from it. Delighted, the shepherdess gathered the roses into a bouquet and presented them to the baby. When Jesus touched the roses, a beautiful pink tinge appeared on the petals.

Along the same vein,
A young orphan boy was living with the shepherds when the herald angels appeared announcing the glad tidings of Christ's birth. On the way to Bethlehem, the child wove a crown of holly branches for the newborn king. But when he laid it before Jesus, the crown looked so unworthy that the little shepherd became ashamed of his gift and began to cry. Then the Christ Child reached out, touched the crown, caused its leaves to sparkle shiny and green, and turned the orphan's tears into scarlet berries.

There is a story in Herodotus about Xerxes. The Persian king is on a plateau proudly scanning his million-man army as it marches toward Greece. Suddenly, the emperor bursts into tears and exclaims, "They will all be gone in 100 years."

Every Sunday night around midnight (plus on full moons and Halloween), a statue of the Virgin Mary in Battle Creek's Oak Hill cemetery is said to weep actual, fluid tears. The statue does appear to have traces or stains where something liquid has dripped, but some allege the marks have been painted there for effect. According to cemetery officials, there is no plumbing attached to the statue from below. The statue stands at the family grave grouping for one Johannas Decker who died in 1910. Many legends and rumours surround the woman buried there, ranging from stories saying she committed suicide to the more extreme tales claiming she killed her children and so must weep eternally through eyes of the statue. (Some Internet stories have switched Johannas to Joanna.) According to a 2004 story from the Battle Creek Enquirer, the stories have been in circulation since the 1940s. One cemetery worker told a reporter he believes the tear stains are from rain flowing down the sculptural depressions in the statueąs face. Moreover, says the article, the statue is not the Virgin Mary but a Greek goddess!

Translation from the Taj Mahal.

Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator's glory.

A Breton legend tells of the tears of the crucified Christ turning into bees and flying away to bring sweetness into the world.

 The legend of 'Meng Jiangnv bringing down the Great Wall with her tears' is a famous folktale of ancient China. Operas, ballads, and musical narrations etc featuring this story are widely spread among the people. The tale is known to almost every household.

Legend has it that Meng Jiangnv’s husband Wan Xiliang was seized by emperor Qinshihuang's army and sent to build the Great Wall. No one knew about his fate. Meng Jiangnv missed her husband so much that she traveled a long distance to the Great Wall, only to find that her husband had died and his remains were buried under the Wall. Not knowing exactly where her husband's body was buried, Meng Jiangnü was in great sorrow. She cried three days and three nights in a row and her wailing touched God. All of a sudden, several miles of the Great Wall collapsed and the remains of Wan Xiliang appeared.

Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, arose from the sea foam on the south-western coast of Cyprus. She married Hephaestus, god of the forge, but the goddess of love wasn’t going to let that stop her having an affair with Ares, god of war! However, she also fell in love with Adonis, a beautiful young man, who was killed whilst hunting in the forests of Cyprus. It is said that where his blood fell, wild anemones grew, accompanied by rock roses, formed from Aphrodite’s tears.

The daisy was said to spring from the tears of Mary Magdalene. It was known as 'God's smile' and 'Day's eye’, an Anglo-Saxon name which had morphed to the current word daisy. This is because the flower opened and closed with the sun's rays. In magic, it would be used in any fair weather spells or rites to honour the Sun. The daisy was associated with Venus, commonly used as a lovers' divination, plucking the petals whilst chanting s/he loves me, s/he loves me not. Medieval knights wore daisy chains made for them by their Ladies when they rode into battle or tournaments, as a sign of their affection and defence of their Ladies' honour.

The Italian red wine Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio, 'The Tears of Christ of Vesuvius', is made from vines grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius near Naples; Lacryma Christi takes its name from the old story told by John Milton in 'Paradise Lost,' when Lucifer and the fallen angels were cast out of Heaven.
According to the Italian version of this legend, as Lucifer went overboard, he grabbed a chunk of Paradise and carried it with him as he fell, dropping it on the coast of Italy at the foot of Vesuvius, where it framed the bay of Naples. Seeing this loss, the story goes, Jesus wept; and the tears watered those heavenly slopes. Where they fell, vines miraculously sprang up, becoming the vineyards from which Lacryma Christi comes.

EASTER STORY COOKIES

To be made the evening before Easter.

You need:

• 1 cup whole innocent pecans
• 1 tsp. bitter vinegar
• 3 pure egg whites
• 1 pinch salt of the earth
• 1 cup sweet-as-the-Lord's-tears sugar
• zip lock baggie
• hammer
• mixing bowl
• large rock
• King James Bible
• numerous children with hearts filled with love for our Lord Jesus

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and explain that for 30 years Jesus walked the earth like a purifying flame. Read Revelation 2:18.
Trap pecans in a zip lock baggie and let children beat them with the hammer over and over and over until their arms are tired with effort and the pecans have been smashed into small pieces. Explain that after Jesus was arrested, He was beaten by the Roman soldiers. Read Mark 13:9.

Ask the children if they had fun using the hammer. Tell them that's just how the Roman soldiers probably felt when they were hammering the nails into our Lord's hands and feet. Read Judges 5:26.

Let each child smell the vinegar and put it in the mixing bowl. Explain that being beaten and nailed to the cross made Jesus thirsty, but they just gave him vinegar to drink. Read Proverbs 10:26.

Add the egg whites to the vinegar. Eggs represent life, just as the thrown-away yolk represents rejection of the temptation of original sin. Explain that Jesus had to be crucified because we are all sinners. Read John 10:10-11.

Sprinkle a little salt into each child's hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus' followers, and the bitterness of our own sin. Read Luke 11:12.

So far, the ingredients are not very appetizing, but then neither is the thought of our innocent Lord being tortured to death for our sins. Add 1 cup of sugar. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us, just like Mommy and Daddy might one day have to die if their children are bad. Read Philippians 4:18.

Beat ingredients with a mixer on high speed for 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. Remind the children that Jesus' blood mixed with his sweat on the cross, and that the colour white represents how pale everyone got when they saw the horrible bloody sight of our dying savoir. Read Hebrews 4:2.

Fold in the poor, broken nuts, just as Jesus' dead body folded as it was taken from the cross. Don't read a Bible verse, just look at the batter and think about all the hard work that went into making Jesus die.

Drop bits of batter by teaspoons onto wax-paper-covered cookie sheet, like tears falling from your spoon. Explain that the cookie sheet is the waxy ground of Israel and that each mound represents a rock in the tomb where Jesus' lifeless body was laid. Read Luke 8:13.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door, and turn the oven off. Explain that once Jesus' body was in the tomb, all goodness in the world was turned off and pretty much everyone thought that was the end of his story. Read Luke 4:20.

Roll the big rock (or a flame-proof beanbag chair if more convenient) against the oven door. Explain that Jesus' tomb was sealed to keep out heretics, souvenir hunters, grave robbers, and coyotes. Read 1 Corinthians 15:55.

Send the children to bed. Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the oven over night, but think of how Jesus' followers must have felt. Remind your children that at least the person they love the most isn't dead. Read Matthew 26:45.

On Easter morning, point out that the cookies have been in the oven much longer than cookies usually stay in the oven. Surely they must have gone bad by now. Read John 11:17.
Open the oven and -- the cookies are gone! On the first Easter, Jesus' followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty. Read Proverbs 9:17 and have a nice breakfast (although you may not feel like eating, after all those midnight cookies).

The Red Copihue

It is said that this flower (which is also called Long Sigh because it expresses indigenous grief) was originated when the mapuche warriors of Chile set off to face the Spanish, leaving their wives alone for weeks and months at a time. The women, concerned over their men, climbed the highest trees in order to see the survivors of the battles from up high, yet all they saw was smoke and death.
So, they would climb down weeping, wetting the leaves and these tears became the blood flower, which was born to remember the indigenous person that fought to the death.

How the Elephant got his trunk
by Harry - aged 8
St. Ives
England

Once upon a time, there was a sad elephant. He was dirty and stinky, because he could not reach to wash his back. All the other animals didn’t play with him because he was smelly.

Elephant sat under a tree, where nobody could see him. He started to cry. His head was hanging down, crying big tears. He sat and cried for days. One day, when his tears had dried up, he went to itch his head and he felt a bump on his back. Then he noticed his nose had stretched because it had got wet with all the crying and it was now a long trunk which had hit him on his back.

He went to the river and got his trunk, put it in the water and sucked the water up. Then he sprayed his back with water.

All the other animals came over to him and said 'you are so clean and smell so lovely. Do you want to play with us?'

The elephant was so happy and said 'yes.'
                                                                        The End.

Tchaikovsky wrote beautiful music for the ballet 'Swan Lake'.

That story tells of a wicked sorcerer, who turned Princess Odette into a white swan; all day she flies in the company of her girl swans, and only at night she lands on the bank of a lake and returns to her form as a woman. (The lake, by the way, was formed from the mother’s tears shed over her daughter’s fate; we have here a double figure of mother/daughter of a Water goddess). The story says that only if a young virgin man swears eternal faith to her love and marries her, she will be released from the magic; but if the prince betrays his oath, she will die. Prince Siegfried of the story indeed falls in love with the Swan princess, but the sorcerer entices him to betray her by making him show his love to the dark, artificial figure of Odile he himself had created. Odile, actually, beside her opposite colour, is the spitting image of Odette (here is a double image of white/black, light/darkness, or good/evil). After the betrayal is discovered, Odette prepares to die; but then the Prince comes and tries to save her. His love releases her from the magic, but they drown together in the lake.

One Tibetan legend focuses on how the pandas got their unique colour markings.
Long long ago, the pandas lived in the high mountains of Tibet. Their fur was completely snow white. They were friends with young shepherdesses, who watched their flock in the mountains around their village.
One day a mother panda and her cub were playing with the shepherdesses and their flock, when a strong and hungry leopard attacked the panda cub. The shepherdesses try to save the cub, but the leopard kills the girls.
All the pandas in the area were very sad and hold a memorial service for the shepherdesses and to remember their sacrifice for the panda cub. The local custom in the mountains was to cover your arms with ashes to honour the deceased.
The pandas were very sad and they all wept. They wiped their eyes with their paws, and covered their ears to block the sound of the crying. They hugged each other to comfort those crying. As they did this, the ashes blacked their fur. The pandas did not wash the black off their fur as a reminder of the girls.

The Incas called Gold and Silver 'the sweat of the Sun, the tears of the Moon.'

Zedekiah’s Cave, an ancient cave located next to the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, is surrounded by a fog of intrigue, religious theories, and biblical legends. The history of this 230 meter-long cave is complex and highly disputed.

What is unique about the cave is that it is the largest artificial cave discovered in Israel, which also happens to be the only undisputed fact about the cave. The cave extends underneath the houses of the Moslem quarter, covering a total of 9,000 square meters. The average height of the cave is 15 meters.

Inside the cave, is Zedekiah’s spring, which is still working today. It is called by some, 'the spring of King Zedekiah’s tears', based on the folktale that it is made up of the tears of King Zedekiah and his sons. Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and Zedekiah escaped to Jericho through this cave.

The pearl-like berries of the mistletoe, as legend has it, were the embittered tears of the Norse goddess of love and marriage. Frigga, who thought she had permanently lost her son, Baldur, who was hit by an enemy with a mistletoe arrow. In answer to her pleas, Frigga's son was brought back to life and in her utter delight; she kissed everyone under the berries. Her declaration, that 'all who stand beneath the mistletoe must kiss in friendship and peace' is upheld even by people in the contemporary age.

In Amsterdam, from the Centraal Station area, you can spot a round, rather low tower, at the end of the Geldersekade ("kade" meaning wharf or quay).

This tower marked the place where sailors embarked for long voyages both to known lands and to countries still to be discovered. It is called "Weepers’ Tower" because the wifes of the sailors cried as their husbands sailed away.

At one side of the Place Saint Bavon in the centre of Ghent, Belgium, rises the impressive carillon tower with its fifty-two singing bells. On the largest bell, which is taller than a tall man, is a Flemish inscription that reads:

"My name is Roland. When I toll there is fire.
   When I ring there is victory in the land."

This great bell might vie with the horn carried by that other Roland, the knightly champion of Charlemagne--a horn that was heard twenty miles. On top of the belfry, is a weather vane, of dragon shape, that presides over all the winds, hot or cold, and rejoices when Roland rings.

A long, long, time ago, before the dragon began to live on the tower, he lived near Aleppo, one of the chief cities of the Saracens in northern Syria. He was such a tender-hearted old dragon that he was called The Weeping Dragon, because he wept large bucketfuls of tears whenever the Belgian crusaders and the Saracens fell to fighting. Now, as the Saracens and Belgians fought at the slightest provocation, the tears of the sympathetic dragon flowed with such abundance into the ground that the soil became unusually fertile, and there soon grew up, from this rich soil, a rare flower. The Belgian crusaders, delighted with the bright-coloured flower, called it The Turk's Turban, though it is a pity they didn't know The Weeping Dragon well enough to name it for him. Buccoleon was the dragon's name. When the last Saracen war was over, one of the crusaders, Taff, a lover of flowers, brought back the seeds of The Turk's Turban to Flanders and planted them in his own garden. Beautiful tulips rewarded him, tulips of brilliant colour that brought him high praise and much money, too.

 A Sumerian story of the birth of Lilith or Lilitu

Before the stars were born
Before people built great cities
The great mountain Atlen shook
And bled fiery blood
As it gave birth to Lilitu

The land all around burned
Many animals and people died
When Lilitu opened her eyes
Lilitu saw the ashes of her birth
And wept tears like rain

Lilitu's tears became rivers and streams
Flowers grew where Lilitu walked
Trees grew where Lilitu sat
The ashes became fertile soil
And an orchard became Lilitu's home

Capturing the essence and spirit that the Blues represent is a novel 'Blues Musical' called 'The Tear Jar.' Not focusing on a particular band or individual, the 'Tear Jar' instead is a collaboration and meeting of the minds of many talented people including producer Chris Bravacos, song writer Robert Welch, audio engineer Frank Silver and writer Jerry King Musser.
To set up the story, one needs to know what a ‘tear jar’ is and what it represents. In ancient cultures, water was a prized possession and giving up water from one’s own body, in the form of tears, was considered a personal sacrifice. They would catch their precious tears in tiny pitchers or 'tear jars.' The 'saved' tears could then be used to ward off evil or to help a sick child. The writer takes this belief and implements it into the storyline and applies it to the infectious Blues songs that encompass and define the musical.

There was a study done where a control group of 100 people were divided into two. 50 people watched a very funny, tears-of-laughter type movie. 50 watched a very sad and tears-of-compassion type movie.
At the end of the sessions researchers collected the 'happy tears' and the 'sad tears with eye droppers.
They found that 'happy tears' are made up of brine...salt water and not a great deal else.
However the 'sad tears' were found to contain the very same chemicals and enzymes that are found in tumours, ulcers and other such lumps and bumps and sicknesses through out the body.

This test concluded that the body, when crying in sadness etc is literally flushing out all of the toxic-chemicals that accumulate and are a part of the sadness /heart ache experience.

Therefore if one holds back those tears, those toxic-waters will find somewhere else to deposit themselves..... and prolonged lack-of-crying-release will guarantee that the body will accumulate a huge amount of internal pollution and toxicity that should have been released through the tears........is it any wonder that the eyes sting so much when we hold back our tears?

Crying and tears may be favoured by natural selection because they bring about helping behaviour by the spectator. This helping behaviour is explained by the assumption that crying and tears 'imitate' some of the perceivable characteristics of a baby that has just been born (e.g., wet face, facial expressions, respiratory sounds). If human parents and people in general are 'programmed' by evolution to feel the need to help and protect when they see (and hear) newborns, then when nonneonates are in need, the appearance and the behaviour that together show resemblance to the neonate may have survival value at some essential points during phylogeny and, thus, may spread in the human species.
In ontogeny, the fact that the shedding of tears usually occurs for the first time not until weeks or months after birth is not an argument against this view but, rather, supports it.

In 'The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals', Charles Darwin listed three reasons for the secretion of tears: 'The primary function of the secretion of tears, with some mucus, is to lubricate the surface of the eye, and a secondary one, as some believe, is to keep the nostrils damp, so that the inhaled air may be moist, and likewise to favour the power of smelling. But another, and at least equally important function of tears is to wash out particles of dust or other minute objects which may get into the eyes” (Darwin, 1872: 169). In Darwin’s view, the excretion of emotional tears was related to the first function.

When a person cries due to happiness, the first drop of tears comes from the right eye, but when it comes from the left eye, its pain.

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.
Jokes and Jokers
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author

Tear gas works by irritating mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, mouth and lungs, and cause tearing, sneezing, coughing, etc. Lachrymators are thought to act by attacking sulphydryl functional groups in enzymes, but the mechanism is not well understood.

Lachrymatory agents are commonly used as riot control agents and chemical warfare agents. For example, tear gas and pepper spray are commonly used for riot control. During World War I more toxic lachrymatory agents were used. Certain lachrymatory agents are often used by police to assist in bringing offenders under control, most notably tear gas, but also in some countries (Finland, Australia, and the USA) another issued substance is Mace, which is used as a personal attack repellent.

CS gas is the common name for 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (also called o-Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile) (chemical formula: C₁₀H₅ClN₂), a 'tear gas' that is used as a riot control agent. It is generally accepted as being non-lethal. CS was discovered by two Americans, Ben Corson and Roger Stoughton, at Middlebury College in 1928, and the chemical gets its name from the first letters of the scientists' surnames. The compound is actually a solid at room temperature, though it is used as an aerosol.

CS was developed and tested secretly at Porton Down in Wiltshire, England, in the 1950s and 1960s. CS was used first on animals, then subsequently on British Army servicemen volunteers. Notably, CS has a limited effect on animals due to 'under-developed tear-ducts and protection by fur'.

An add on the internet
'Nature’s Tears® is an all-natural EyeMist® containing Bio-Logic Aqua® tissue-culture grad water-pure, pH correct and bio-compatible with the eye’s natural tear film. Restores lost moisture to the tear film’s delicate aqueous layer, the skin of the eyelids and the skin around the eyes. Nature’s Tears® is not eye drops.

Nature’s Tears® EyeMist® is a new convenience applied any time, any place, without lifting the eyelid or disrupting most activities. The unique, patent-pending, micron-size mist does not flood the tear film and is sterile, safe, propellant-free and preservative-free.

Nature’s Tears® contains no chemicals to irritate eyes or surrounding sensitive areas. May be used with all other eye care products. Will not disturb make-up. Apply Nature’s Tears natural moisture as often as desired.'
So, we have an aerosol with water in it then.

Your momma is so ugly, when she cries the tears flow down her back.

After painting 'Guernica', Pablo Picasso made a number of further studies of a detail of that painting, a woman weeping over the body of her child. The last of these, and the most accomplished, is 'Femme en pleurs' or 'Weeping Woman', based on the features of his mistress Dora Mar. Finished in 1937, Picasso sold it to Sir Roland Penrose for Ł300. This painting, more than any other, became the iconic image of modernism. The Tate in London acquired it in 1987 as a consequence of the British Government accepting it in lieu of taxes.

It was confirmed by doctors attached to the police Criminal Investigation Department that the mysterious red liquid, which flows from the eyes of a statue of the Virgin Mary belonging to a Chilean woman, is indeed human blood. It was stated by Dr Inelia Chacon that three samples of the liquid examined in a laboratory were shown to be blood.
The small blue and white porcelain statue belongs to Olga Rodriguez, a housewife from the working class La Cisterna district in the south of Santiago. Since 14 November,1992, when the tears of blood were seen for the first time, the modest home of Mrs Rodriguez has become the main attraction for residents of the district. The Church has refused to take up a position concerning this strange phenomenon.

Observers have recalled the tears of blood of another statue of the Virgin Mary in Montreal, Canada, in 1985. They say this was followed by a near-epidemic of such phenomena in the case of other statues, as well as icons and crucifixes, in the city. Laboratory tests, commissioned by the Canadian Bishops Conference, found the tears to be blood mixed with fat, which melted when slightly warmed.

A weeping tile is a porous pipe used for underground drainage. The pipe is typically plastic with small slits cut lengthwise into it. It is buried and surrounded by aggregate larger than the slits. The aggregate rocks prevent excessive soil from falling through the slits into the weeping tile. With this arrangement, water in the surrounding soil above the weeping tile flows into the weeping tile. The weeping tile then drains into a storm sewer or a sump pump.

The Ibanez WD7 Weeping Demon Wah Pedal will have your audience screaming for more with its shrieks, cries, wails, and seductive siren songs. Among its features are spring and normal footboard action, selectable wah range, and fine tuning controls.
Order today, so your guitar can cry if it wants to.

A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING.
           by John Donne

                Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
                For thus they be
                Pregnant of thee ;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

In March of 1857, the largest sale of human beings in the history in the United States took place at a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia. During the two days of the sale, raindrops fell unceasingly on the racetrack. It was almost as though the heavens were crying. So, too, fell teardrops from many of the 436 men, women, and children who were auctioned off during the two days. The sale would thereafter be known as "the weeping time."

The legend of LaLlorona (pronounced "LAH yoh ROH nah"), Spanish for the Weeping Woman, has been a part of Hispanic culture in the Southwest since the days of the conquistadores. The tall, thin spirit is said to be blessed with natural beauty and long flowing black hair. Wearing a white gown, she roams the rivers and creeks, wailing into the night and searching for children to drag, screaming to a watery grave.

Weeping Candles.(Net ad)

Our Candles are unique and known throughout the world. The outside of the candle is black and the inside is a blood red so, as the wick burns, the candles black outer melts, exposing the inner red wax which gives the impression the candle is weeping whilst releasing the delicate opium fragrance.

Weeping Mary
Weeping Mary is a small, nearly all-Black community, just off Highway 21 in Cherokee County behind the Caddoan Indian Mounds Historic Site. Heading north on Texas 21 toward Alto, after a few miles take a left by the junkyard (a good place to browse for offbeat items and antiques) and the Thomas Chapel Church. The population is a mere 29 people scattered about four or five county roads off of CR-2907, aka Weeping Mary Road.

It is said that the community, which was never incorporated, was formed after the Civil War by freed slaves and named after the weeping of Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus. However, local lore has it that it was named after a matriarch who formed a pact with the area's freed slaves not to sell their lands to white settlers. But when one man sold his plot of land to whites, the matriarch is said to have spent her life weeping for the loss of her community. Another legend has it that gold is buried throughout the community, but according to Weeping Mary resident J.L. Skinner - it is simply that: a legend.

The Weeping Toado can be recognised by the dark stripe along the side of the body and the vertical "tear lines" across the cheek. This species grows to 20cm in length.
Like all the toadfishes (Family Tetraodontidae) the Weeping Toado has fused beak-like teeth.
The Weeping Toado occurs mostly in sheltered bays from the central Queensland coast, around the south of the country and north to the central coast of Western Australia.

'A place weeping enters our sleep,' wrote the Kurdish poet Bejan Matur, 'a place weeping enters our sleep and never leaves.'

 'Weep holes,' as they are called in the trades, are openings that should be found at the base of all exterior siding -- including stucco, wood and composite siding, and brick veneer -- to drain away moisture that gets behind the exterior finish. Even when present, landscape grading and soil that is not held below the base of these sidings or veneer can block the weeping and can trap moisture behind the exterior finish.

Through the most holy treasures that have enlightened the life of the Orthodox Christians from Transylvania, is the Holy Icon of the Mother of God from the Romanian Orthodox Nicula Monastery. Around this Holy Icon have gathered, as to bastion of freedom and peace, generations and generations of Romanian Orthodox Christians. For more than three centuries, the most venerated icon has brought comfort and support to many shattered souls that prayed before it.
The history of the holy relic begins in 1681 with the pious priest Luca (Luka) from Iclod.
He continued an old tradition of these places, painting icons for the faithful, true Scriptures given to the people for eternity. After a few years the Holy Icon was brought from the priest by a peasant and given to the church in Nicula. On the 15th of February 1694, a few Austrian officers came into the church while they were admiring the Holy Icon they saw it was weeping… real tears were coming out of the eyes of the Holy Mother of God. They ran and brought the priest and all the villagers and they all saw the tears that were falling on the ground. The Holy Icon kept weeping for 26 days, people would come and wipe the tears. There were many sick people that came touched the tears and were healed and none of the ones that saw the Holy Icon died of a violent death.

 Weeping Cross, a cross erected on or by the highway, especially for the devotions of penitents; hence, 'to return by the weeping cross', to return from some undertaking in humiliation or penitence.
"Few men have wedded ... their paramours ... but have come home by Weeping Cross."- Florio: Montatgne.

Weeping songs are sad poems sung at funerals of beloved people. Weeping and generally songs of Haros are deeply rooted in the past and are known to us from the times of Homer. Though the ancient Greeks believed in the immortality of a human soul and the underground life still death was treated as a tragic thing.

In the process of weeping there exists a strict hierarchy. Thus, when a man dies the weeping should be started by his mother who is followed then by his sister, daughter and the wife at the end. It is considered an honour when somebody outside of the family decides to weep over the deceased. It is not allowed to stop the woman who is weeping and if some other woman wants to join or to continue she should ask permission for doing this.

Some funeral songs have a clearly expressed didactic character and represent a certain historical and ethnical interest. It is only natural to expect that the most characteristic weeping songs are connected with the institute of vendetta.

Weeping Winds

Oh! Cold March winds your cruel laments
Are hard on prisoners’ hearts,
For you bring my mother’s pleading cries
From whom I have to part.
I hear her weeping lonely sobs
Her sorrows sweep me by,
And in the dark of prison cell
A tear has warmed my eye.
Bobby Sands

How to make a weeping statue:
What is needed is a hollow statue made of a porous material such as plaster or ceramic.  The icon must be glazed or painted with some sort of impermeable coating.  If the statue is then filled up with a liquid (surreptitiously, through a tiny hole in the head, for example), the porous material will absorb it, but the glazing will stop it from flowing out.  If the glazing, however, is imperceptibly scratched away on or around the eyes, tear-like drops will leak out, as if materialising from thin air.  If the cavity behind the eyes is small enough, once all the liquid has dripped out there are virtually no traces left in the icon.  When I put it to the test, this trick proved to be very satisfactory, baffling all onlookers.
Dr. Luigi Garlaschelli from Pavia University published in Chemistry in Britain.

Hundreds flock to holy 'weeping tree' oddity
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas. An acacia tree that started sprouting a foam like substance on its branches after its owner died is drawing hundreds of people a day to see what some believe is supernatural ice.
The faithful and the curious have been coming to Leonisia Garcia's home near the Mexico border since last week, after Mrs. Garcia died of a heart attack.
Family members said they noticed the yellow-tinted froth and the puddles of liquid around the trunk a day after they buried the 92-year-old matriarch. They say she loved the acacia tree and spent days beneath it while colouring the cascarones – confetti-filled eggshells she sold each year.
The tree has been "weeping" ever since, they say. 

No one sheds tears but Allah will save his body from the fire of Hell. If the tears trickle down a person's cheeks, his or her face will be saved from any degradation. If one out of a group of people cries, the whole group will be blessed by Allah. Only tears have unrestricted power. Verily, tears can extinguish the fire of Hell.
Using analogy, the Prophet Muhammad taught that the sincere tears of faithful Muslims can save them from Hell. It is this teaching of Islam that makes attractive and firm the tradition of ritual weeping at Daarut Tauhid.